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A baby panda born in a Malaysian zoo five months ago made her public debut on Saturday.

The female, which has not yet been named, is the second offspring of giant pandas Liang Liang and Xing Xing, both of which have been on a 10-year loan to Malaysia since 2014.

The first cub, a female called Nuan Nuan born in August 2015, was sent back to China last November as part of a deal with Beijing to return cubs born in captivity at age 2.

Members of the media watched and filmed the cub in an air-conditioned enclosure at the national zoo through a glass shield.

Zoologists said the healthy cub weighs 9 kilogrammes (19.8 pounds) and will face the public later on Saturday following its appearance to the media.

Zoo officials say the baby panda's parents broke the world record for a second baby in four years via natural reproduction.

Malaysia's national zoo has invested hundreds of thousands of (US) dollars on a panda complex including bamboo trees mimicking their natural habitat, after China loaned the cub's parents to mark 40 years of diplomatic relations with Malaysia.

According to WWF (World Wild Fund for Nature), there are 1,864 giant pandas in the wild, living mainly in bamboo forests high in the mountains of western China and subsisting almost entirely on bamboo.